Integrated optics is a well-established technology using lithography to define waveguiding paths on the surface of a planar substrate to create a variety of passive and active components. As used herein, passive components are those that route light without detection and retransmission of data signals.
Passive integrated optics devices provide robust components for power splitting, wavelength routing arid similar functions. Active integrated optics devices typically use a refractive index change from thermo- or electro-optic effects to switch light beams between optical paths.
Optomechanical components potentially provide electro-mechanical latching with no power dissipation. Micro-electro-mechanics is a rapidly developing field that exploits lithographic mass fabrication techniques to build miniature mechanical systems ranging in size from millimeters to microns. As used herein, a micromechanical element is a miniature element that has been shaped by lithographic patterning followed by deposition of and/or etching a workpiece, generally a multilayer structure of which several layers typically are of polysilicon. Some of the polysilicon layers are releasable by removal of intermediate sacrificial layers to form mechanical structures. Such an element is then used in a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS), for example in micromechanical optics. MEMS devices are available from many sources, as for example, the MEMS Technology Application Center at North Carolina (MCNC). There is now an extensive body of literature relating to such technology and its application to optical switching. Typical of such literature is a paper entitled "MEM'S the Word for Optical Beam Manipulation" published in Circuits and Devices, July 1997, pp. 11-18.
It is normally difficult to combine the properties of micro-mechanical optics and integrated optics in a single device because of the incompatibility of their materials and in their processing.
The present invention involves a new class of devices that are more compatible to the combining of the two technologies of micro-mechanical optics and integrated optics for use in hybrid integrated micro-opto-mechanics (HIMOM).